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  • Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned: Enchanted Stories from the French Decadent Tradition ed. by Gretchen Schultz and Lewis Seifert
  • Adrion Dula (bio)
Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned: Enchanted Stories from the French Decadent Tradition. Edited by Gretchen Schultz and Lewis Seifert, Princeton University Press, 2016, 255 pp.

The "happily ever after" fairy-tale ending is perhaps one of the most recognizable motifs of the genre. However, numerous authors in the collection Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned use the marvelous to criticize the belief in the possibility of happiness in a modern or industrial society. The tales reflect a cynical reaction to a turbulent and unstable nineteenth century in France by [End Page 189] offering readers a critique of modern notions of progress as manifest in new forms of technology, industry, urbanism, and the rising bourgeoisie. Many of the writers, such as Rachilde, Jean Lorrain, or Catulle Mendès, were chosen by the editors because of the writers' association with the decadent tradition, a literary trend that rose in popularity during the second half of the nineteenth century. Though hundreds of decadent tales were written in French, the fairy tales incorporated into the collection from Guillaume Apollinaire, Charles Baudelaire, and Anatole France present works from illustrious authors who are celebrated for their canonical works outside of this movement.

The volume reawakens and revives such well-known characters as Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard and his wives, and Cinderella, recast in modern, at times urban and industrial, settings. These French decadent fairy tales challenge many modern readers' preconceived notions of the fairy tale as they are entrenched in decadent themes such as decay, mortality, fear of modernity and industry, the femme fatale, and non-normative gender expression and sexuality. Variations of the tale of "Cinderella" are reworked by Emile Bergerat, Claude Cahun, Jules Lemaître, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Marcel Schwob. The tale of "Sleeping Beauty" is revised by Catulle Mendès, Anatole France, and Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, and Bluebeard and his wives by Jules Lemaître, Marcel Schwob, and Anatole France. Yet, these familiar characters are not the stereotypical innocent, virginal, and passive beauties nor the hypermasculine heroes of Charles Perrault's seventeenth-century canonical French tales. Moreover, the French decadent narratives disrupt the classical romantic scripts and myths often found in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French tales as the villains are redeemed, fragrant flowers turn deadly, and the classical marriage closure is replaced with the death of the lover, the preference for the illusory love found in dreams, or the desire for money.

Drawing not only from Perrault's cast of characters and storylines but also from Arthurian legends, European traditions, and inventing their own, the tales in this volume offer a wide variety of cynical characters, forgotten forests, and perverse plots. Fairies are no longer the benevolent creatures sometimes featured in French early modern classical tales; as in Pierre Veber's tale "The Last Fairy" in which the fairy's art is unnecessary, ineffective, and even destructive. The fairies in Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned are victims of deforestation and industrialization, are dangerous and depraved creatures, are misunderstood, or are rendered useless by modern marvels of the industrial age, such as automation, transportation, and photography.

The volume is organized chronologically by author beginning with Charles Baudelaire's "Fairies' Gifts" from his renowned 1869 work Le Spleen de [End Page 190] Paris (Paris Spleen) and concludes with Claude Cahun's 1925 tale "Cinderella, the Humble and Haughty Child." Rather than organizing the tales by tale type, the arrangement chronologically by author allows the reader to gain an understanding of each writer's ideology and style, especially when more than one tale is included for an author. Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned includes English translations of thirty-six French tales by nineteen authors. Only four of the tales have been selected and edited from former translations, and fifteen tales have been translated into English for the first time by Seifert and Shultz.

In addition to the translated tales, the volume contains an informative introduction that contextualizes the fairy tales in their sociopolitical, cultural, and literary milieu. The editors discuss the turbulent political structures and events...

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